We want the best for communities across Western Australia. That’s why we’re fundamentally committed to advancing trade and commerce in WA. Our vision is for WA to be the best place to live and do business. To achieve this, we listen to and work with stakeholders across the community to understand their challenges. We work hard to understand what’s happening in our economy. We undertake the only non-government economic forecast for WA. Finally, we provide a quarterly view of consumer and business confidence so that we can understand the big challenges facing our society.
We also commit to developing public policy options that reflect the needs of business, families and the WA workforce. In childcare policy, we’ve secured major changes to support women returning to the workforce. We also continue to try and support young workers in achieving more working opportunities by advocating for changed retail trading hours.
Our commitment to working with stakeholders across the community extends to work we do with the likes of the Australian Trade Commission, regional chambers, bilateral chambers, indigenous bodies and many other industry associations, here in WA and across the nation. We work with businesses to extend their international trade footprint and we’ve supported more than 270,000 apprentices and trainees in the last two decades to get a start in their working life. We also maintain a directory of aboriginal businesses in WA to support their growth.
Through our education development fund, we also support students to enrich their economics studies, to understand and access career opportunities and to think of new ideas to face critical societal problems. This is how we advance trade and commerce in WA.